


Introduction to Neuroeconomics

by voltemand



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26189257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voltemand/pseuds/voltemand
Summary: While everyone else has been trying to break free, Britta’s been getting the hang of standing still. And she’s learned that she likes stillness, likes quiet afternoons. She likes sitting alone with Jeff, sipping Cokes and making fun of each other, his arm slung around her shoulder. She likes it when his phone buzzes with a text from Slater and he waits just a little bit before replying, waits just a little bit before moving his arm.
Relationships: Britta Perry/Jeff Winger
Comments: 16
Kudos: 44





	Introduction to Neuroeconomics

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darthtayter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthtayter/gifts).



> And a special shoutout to Bri, who was one of the first people to read this fic and whose [lovely Transfer Dance fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24474991) you should definitely check out.

Britta would be lying if she said she loves Vaughn, but she likes him well enough. He’s looking down at her earnestly, his hair rustling in the breeze.

“I’m moving to Delaware,” he tells her. “For hacky-sack.”

Normally, Britta would do one of two things right now. The first: stress her feminist creds and thus her total autonomy, then run away with Vaughn to some state she’s heard smells faintly like fish. The second: stress her feminist creds and thus her total autonomy, then run away to Brazil or Denmark or Uganda and start a new life, at least until her money runs out and she has to come back to Colorado. So: a crossroads. A choice. Run with, or run without.

But she doesn’t think she wants to run at all. While everyone else has been trying to break free, Britta’s been getting the hang of standing still. And she’s learned that she likes stillness, likes quiet afternoons. She likes sitting alone with Jeff, sipping Cokes and making fun of each other, his arm slung around her shoulder. She likes it when his phone buzzes with a text from Slater and he waits just a little bit before replying, waits just a little bit before moving his arm.

Vaughn’s nice, and that’s a problem.

“Give me a week,” Britta says, and she tries to forget about it until the Transfer Dance, exactly seven days after their conversation.

\--

Michelle’s beautiful. There’s no getting around it—she’s got a look to her, like a cross between a forties movie star and a sci-fi heroine, but somehow better than either of those things are by themselves. She’s smart too, and she’s funny and strong and adventurous. She’s lovely, really lovely, and Jeff knows that she’s perfect and that they’re perfect and that by any standards he’s a lucky guy. So then it begs the question: why isn’t he happy? No, that’s not right. Edit: why isn’t he happier?

He’s happy. He knows that he’s happy because she’s hot and the sex is great and he likes the sound of her saying “my boyfriend, Jeff,” when they’re introducing themselves. He likes how everyone in a room looks at them. 

But Jeff isn’t euphoric. He’s barely excited, really, and he knows that love can be slow and steady, but goddamn it, he wants more than this. He wants to think about her when she’s not there, wish for her, long for her. He wants to crave her weekends and her long nights and her Monday mornings, to feel that every part of her is up for grabs. Maybe that’s unhealthy. Who gives a fuck.

“Jeff,” Michelle says, turning around to look at him, “there’s some sort of dance tonight.” She smiles, mouth full of exquisitely white teeth. “I think your friend was nominated for something.”

He nods. “The Failure Queen.” Jeff doesn’t know why he says things like this about Britta, or why he doesn’t want anyone else to agree with him. 

Michelle shakes her head, but she cracks up anyway. “Are we going?”

 _You weren’t supposed to laugh_ , Jeff thinks. “Sure,” he says. “It’ll be useless and entertaining. Classic Greendale.”

\--

 _This is so stupid_ , Britta thinks, not for the first time tonight, and she's infinitely grateful that she declined the nomination for Transfer Queen. The lights are too bright and the girls are too blonde and everything is too shiny, too new for a school that can barely afford working toilets. Something is afoot.

That something turns out to be the dean in six-inch heels, tottering around and propositioning men in Dalmatian suits. “Britta!” he says when he sees her. “What a _wonderful_ surprise.”

Britta grits her teeth. “Why is it a surprise?”

The dean laughs. “Well, I assumed you’d be packing your bags already.”

 _Oh, shit_. “You know, I almost forgot about that.”

He winks clumsily. “We can keep that as our little secret. Between the girls. Just go find your man.”

\--

“It gets worse every year,” Michelle tells him. “Just so you know.” She gestures to all the girls in their pretty dresses, primped and preened like there’s no tomorrow. One of Britta’s words comes unbidden to Jeff’s mind: _panopticon_. To ward it away, he replies “Well, I don’t mind the view,” and enjoys the way Michelle’s lips pout, red and full.

“We can always leave,” she murmurs, fluttering her lashes. She’s immaculate. She’s beautiful. Jeff doesn’t want her.

He glances over her shoulder, sees Britta with her boyfriend. She’s lifting her chin, blue-grey eyes wide and blonde curls askew. She opens her mouth to speak, and Jeff knows that her lips are all bitten up; they always are; he remembers how it felt to kiss her, her mouth warm and raggedy with a tiny cut on the side, her hand running over the curve of his jaw then pulling him closer. _Seize the day, Winger_ , except the day’s seized, the night’s seized, he’s got himself a pretty good fix right here, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he? 

“Let’s get some drinks,” he tells Michelle, and he doesn’t look at Britta when they head towards the punch.

\--

Britta looks up at Vaughn, making her eyes wide and blue. Innocent. Girlish.

“Honey,” she begins, then stops. Britta doesn’t say _honey_. She can’t get too out of character. “Vaughn,” she says instead. “I think we need to talk.”

He smiles. It’s an easy, thoughtless motion, and that cinches it for her: Vaughn doesn’t think. He doesn’t plan, or intend; everything just falls into place for him, good or bad, and he rolls with the punches, probably never throwing any of his own.

“I’ve made a decision,” Britta tells him.

\--

“ _Bitch_ ,” Jeff hears Vaughn hiss.

He puts down his drink and is across the room in a flash, and no, he doesn’t know why; Britta is (allegedly) an adult who can (again, allegedly) take care of her problems, but _come on_. “Normally,” Jeff says, “I would agree with you, but what’s the situation this time?”

Britta’s embarrassed, he notices. All flushed, all pink, it’s spreading from her neck up to her face and she’s resolutely not making eye contact. “None of your business.”

“Dude,” Vaughn says. “Back off.” He’s all in Jeff’s face, which is strange because Jeff’s the one defending Britta’s honor right now. ( _Oh, crap_ , a small, Abida-like part of his mind thinks. _We’re in_ Back to the Future.) But Vaughn’s not even close to a jock; the man plays _hacky-sack_ , so Jeff isn’t scared when he says “Try me.”

He isn’t expecting Vaughn to actually swing at him, though, and it connects with a sick _crack_ to the bridge of Jeff’s nose, a blossom of pain opening up at the point of contact. Vaughn pulls back, steps back. Jeff almost laughs. 

“Jesus Christ! Vaughn, what the _fuck_?” This is from Britta, who’s suddenly very, very close, her hands on his nose in ways that are making it all a lot worse, actually, but her eyes are very large and her mouth is pursed, little faded bitten pink lips all twisted up for him.

Michelle hurries over too, but Britta refuses to let her push her out of the way. Michelle stands on the side instead, looking like a marble statue, a gun, a trap: poised, loaded, ready to spring. She knows the script, and Britta doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter because only one of them has her hands on Jeff right now.

“Hey,” he croaks, trying to quirk an eyebrow in some facsimile of charming.

“Are you _okay_ ,” Britta says, barely a question at all as she probes Jeff’s face, giving him little bolts of pain and something else too. Her fingernails are too long; they press tiny half-moons into his skin. He won’t like how he looks tomorrow. 

Maybe he doesn’t care about tomorrow, though, because he’s on the verge of doing something stupid and unforgivable and romantic, something that he should have done on their first day and can never do again. Britta’s wearing a little bit of eye makeup, just enough to make her irises impossibly blue. He almost closes the gap.

“Jeffrey?” The dean’s rushed over at some point (Jeff notices absentmindedly that there’s a small circle forming around them); he puts his hand on Jeff’s chest. “Oh, _Jeffrey_. What in the world happened?”

“I fell,” Jeff cracks. No one laughs, but Pierce gives him a thumbs-up in the background. 

Britta shakes her head. “Vaughn punched him.” She pauses, then adds, a little begrudgingly, “Jeff was standing up for me. Or whatever.”

“That,” says Jeff, “is untrue. I was merely trying to ascertain the situation.”

“He was sticking up for her,” Michelle says. She walks forward, regal in her heels. Jeff wishes that he was in love with her. She gives him a small, sad smile.

“Oh, _Jeffrey_ ,” the dean says again. He’s somehow gotten a handkerchief out of his pocket and is blowing his nose loudly. “I always knew you were capable of grand gestures, but this?” He gestures at Jeff’s face. “Was it worth it?” he spits at Vaughn. “IS ANYTHING EVER WORTH THAT?”

Jeff swats the dean’s hand away. “Just—stop.” He looks at Vaughn, hunched in the distance. “Can you give me an actual explanation of what the hell is going on, though?”

Britta sighs and mutters something about dick-measuring. “I can. So, Vaughn got a hacky-sack scholarship to the best community college in Delaware, right? And he wanted me to go with him, but I chose not to go. And then he called me a bitch, which indicated that he hadn’t been thinking of it as a choice at all, which _really_ says something about the patriarchy, but anyway. You came.” She’s still looking up at him, and Jeff doesn’t want Michelle’s perfect lashes; he wants Britta’s eye bags, the skin there as soft and as delicate as a newborn’s. “You did, and Vaughn punched you. And you know the rest.”

Vaughn scoffs. “That is totally not what happened.”

“Hey, kinda lost all credibility when you fucking _punched Jeff in the face_ ,” Britta shoots back. He recoils, and she adds “Go fuck yourself.”

Vaughn doesn’t scurry, exactly, but it’s something close.

The crowd is receding—apparently, Britta being in the right for once is less appealing than whatever they had thought was going on. Shirley gives him a wave, mouthing _Tiny Nipples punched you!_ “I am _so_ proud of you,” the dean says before going away to have gay Dalmatian sex or whatever. And soon, it’s just him, Britta, and Michelle.

\--

Britta didn’t realize she was cupping Jeff’s face almost like she was about to—well, Slater’s right there, so she lets go. “You need to go to the hospital,” she tells him. 

He grins crookedly. “I always thought I would kind of rock the Han Solo look.” He seems to remember Slater just then, because he hurriedly adds “Right, Michelle?”

“I can take you there,” Slater says. She pauses. “Do you want me to?”

Jeff looks like he’s working out some complicated chemical equation in his head. Measure the elements. Find the right balance. “I mean.” He touches his nose and winces. “Somebody’s gotta.”

Slater looks at him, and Britta knows that look; she’s beginning to recognize it as one of her own. “I don’t think that person should be me.”

Jeff widens his eyes. “Is this what I think it is?”

Slater shrugs. “You don’t seem to have done a lot of thinking tonight.” Her voice grows softer, kinder. “Yes, Jeff.”

Britta casts her vision downward; this is not her moment, or at least she doesn’t think it is. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Slater pressing a fleeting kiss to Jeff’s cheek; just as quickly, she’s gone.

She feels Jeff’s hand on her shoulder giving it a quick squeeze. “Okay?” he asks.

“Aren’t I supposed to be asking you that?” Britta replies. 

He tosses her his car keys. “I think it’s going to be an interesting ride.”

\--

For someone who claims to have lived on the road most of her life, Britta is an amazingly shitty driver. White-knuckled, hair askew, she’s as much of a mess as always, but Jeff finds himself studying the sharp bones of her wrists, the wild cloud of her curls. At first, they don’t talk, except for fighting over the radio. Jeff wants pop, Britta wants rock, but both of them agree that country is disgusting so they tentatively settle on hip-hop.

Turns out that Britta is a _killer_ rapper, and they scream out the lyrics to “D.O.A.,” cranking open the windows and letting the lamppost lights blaze through their fields of vision. “THIS IS ANTI-AUTO-TUNE,” Britta yells out into the night, her mouth stretching around the words. Her hair’s blowing in the wind, and Jeff thinks embarrassingly little about the woman who just dumped him.

When the song’s finished, they’re winded. Jeff sits back. “You know, I wish I had kissed you,” he says before he can stop himself.

Britta keeps her eyes on the road. “A lot of people do.”

He’s already said it, so he figures he might as well commit. “I don’t want there to be so many people.”

“You can’t stop people looking at me,” she tells him. “But,” Britta adds, a touch of mischief to her voice, “I like it when you try.”

His mouth is dry. “Stop the car.”

She does, then turns around to face Jeff, haloed in the orange light of a lamppost. 

They don’t make it to the hospital.

\--

Britta pulls on her shirt. “Jesus,” she says, examining Jeff’s nose as they wiggle into their seats. “It’s _really_ swollen.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” he snipes. “It hurts like hell.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” She’s angry, and maybe she shouldn’t be. Maybe she should have ignored him, should have been cool, all business. But that’s Slater’s game, and he doesn’t want Slater; he wants her; he proved just now how much he wants her. She basks in this knowledge for a second and then remembers: be angry. “We’re going to CVS.”

When they get there, the cashier looks at them a little suspiciously. “Ice,” Britta says. “Can we please get some ice?”

Jeff grins at them, still a little dashing despite everything. “And a Gatorade for the lady.”

The cashier says “You can get those yourselves” and points to the aisles.

Once they’ve bought their supplies, as Jeff keeps annoyingly calling the ice and Gatorade, he gets into the driver’s seat. “I don’t know your address,” he says. 

Britta almost yells at him until she remembers _oh yeah, it’s his car_. She tells him where she lives, and that feels strange and intimate and new, despite the fact that they _literally had sex in this car less than an hour ago_.

“Okay,” Jeff says. He drives.

\--

Britta seems different, now that he’s known her biblically or whatever. More fragile. He sees that she’s clutching the supplies in her lap, thin veins spread over her hands like spiderwebs. The moon is out.

They don’t listen to any more music. Jeff fiddles with the window, opens and closes it until she snaps at him to “stop, or I’ll cut your balls off,” and he laughs to himself because yeah, that’s Britta.

She taps her feet, boots clunking against the car mats, then takes a swig of the Gatorade. “Want?” she asks him, and when he nods, she gingerly hands him the open bottle. It tastes like gross food coloring and sugar, but Jeff pretends that it tastes like her too. He gives it back.

“Do you think that we’re shitty people?” Britta asks him non sequitur. “For this.”

“I mean, all people are shitty. But yeah, this is maybe an eight-point five out of ten on the general scale.”

Jeff sees her nod in the mirror, and he knows how she would describe her own face right now: pensive, thoughtful. He’s a little horrified to find that he agrees.

They reach Britta’s apartment building. It’s in a pretty sketchy part of town; everything smells like pot or piss and a dude is humping a fire hydrant on the next corner.

Britta hands him the ice. “Thanks,” she says. “For everything.” It’s dark; he can only sort of make out her face, but he knows that she’s blushing.

“You’re welcome. Oh, and Britta?”

She turns around. “Yeah?”

Jeff swallows, thinks about saying something, thinks better of it. “I like you a lot.”

“Hey, you too,” she says, saluting from her doorstep. There's a little more light here; Jeff can see her face, moon-pale, and her eyes, ridiculously large.

And if he kisses her right then and there, illuminated only by a few cigarette lighters and a broken lamppost; if her lips are gloriously indented and jagged; if everything, just for a few seconds, stops, then that’s Jeff’s business, and Jeff’s alone.

(And if she’s beautiful, if he longs to consume her and meld with her, if she wishes for this moment to last forever, if they both think _I love you_ too soon, if he wants her afternoons and she wants his, then _that_ is a story for another day. If they spend the summer apart or together, if they find each other again, if they allow each other more than a glance: those are too many stories to tell.)

But right here, right now, Jeff is at a crossroads.

He steps onto the doorstep. He makes his choice.

**Author's Note:**

> Yell with me on Tumblr at [withatalentforsquaddrill](https://withatalentforsquaddrill.tumblr.com) (for general bullshit) or [foresme](https://foresme.tumblr.com) (for fandom bullshit).


End file.
